Pulse (Contemporary new adult/college romance) (Club Grit Trilogy) by Brooke Jaxsen Read Free Book Online

legs, but in between my ears: my brain, my thoughts, my wants. But he’d been like just the rest: he was just doing it for his own selfish reason. I guess he just wanted to get rid of me.
    “Is that what you think I am, a bother?” I asked quietly. I was hoping he’d stop being so mean to me. All I’d ever wanted was for him to hold me, to fuck me, but instead, he pushed me away as I tried to pull him in. There’d never been a guy in Cali that rejected me, not even the ones with girlfriends, and now, here? With Skylar? I felt like I was back in high school again, asking out the popular guy with a homemade Valentine, him laughing and tearing it up in front of my face as my eyes pooled with tears.
    He smirked. He hadn’t made a scene and I could tell he was stifling laughter. Dissing me was one thing, but laughing at me? That was a whole new level of disrespect and cruelty, the kind I wasn’t going to take from anybody. “Yeah, you are, and I’m not a fucking puppy you can play with because you think I’m cute. I’m a bouncer. My job is to make sure you don’t fuck up the club experience for other people, not to make sure you don’t hurt yourself. I’m not your dad. I’m not your boyfriend. I’m not your anything. Tell your friends that we had an okay date. Conveniently forget to set a second one. Find a new guy to bother. Don’t ever come up to me in Club Grit again. Do you understand?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.” I understood where he was coming from, but why didn’t he understand that although I’d complicated things, I’d complicated them because I wanted him. I hadn’t done it to piss him off. This wasn’t some elaborate romance novel scheme where I was helping a friend get revenge by breaking Skylar’s heart. This was something else. I didn’t want to call it a crush, because those were for babies, middle school girls huddled in a corner in the library reading young adult books about people they were too mousy and shy and boring and mediocre to be. Those were for girls like the kind I wasn’t anymore, the kind that I’d never even acknowledge I’d been to most people. Maybe not even to Skylar.
    “Good. I’m going to work. Bye.” I kept sipping my drink on the couch and watched as he walked to his bike. He took a fucking bike here? I got up and went out before he unlocked it.
    “I still owe you for the cab.” I leaned against the bike stand but he didn’t turn to look at me, still trying to get his rusty cheap lock to open. Nobody in LA was so poor as to need a bike, at least, not around here. He wasn’t from my world. He was from somewhere more real. I hadn’t seen a bike like his since I’d left home, the kind of bike that wasn’t a fashion accessory but that took someone from point A to point B as fast as possible. Even the messengers here had fancy bikes with custom paint jobs. But Skylar’s bike? It wasn’t falling apart, but it wasn’t new. It was used, it was practical, and it was irreplaceable, just like him.
    “Yeah, you do. Do you know how much those things cost? Probably not. I highly doubt you have the cash on hand for it, and if you did, it’d be in bills I couldn’t break.”
    “If you’re poor, how’d I get home?”
    “Work gives me vouchers to use for cabs to get home. I used those on getting you back home and had to pay my own way. It was seventy bucks each time.” Oh, that’s how.
    “Just keep the change,” I said as I counted out twenty twenties from my purse. I knew it was overkill but I wasn’t in the mood for math right now and it wasn’t like it was a lot of money to me now. They were still crisp and had that new money smell that ATMs spat out all day. Skylar didn’t even count it. He just put it in his pocket and left.
    My heart fell: he’d wanted the money I owed him, not a date. I’d forgotten, in my time with Omega Mu Gamma, that not every time a guy showed interest in me that he wanted a date or even a fuck. I’d forgotten that